Today we discuss an impediment to dialogue about animals in research that seems to have a special power to get people talking past each other rather than actually engaging with each other:

Imprecision about the positions being staked out.

Specifically, here, the issue is whether the people trying to have a dialogue are being precise in laying out the relevant philosophical positions about animals — the position they hold, the position they’re arguing against, the other positions that might be viable options.

Why is imprecision about your philosophical position a dialogue blocker? It tends to muddy what you’re trying to communicate. What you say may suggest that your primary concern is X when it’s actually Y. Or, people may interpret your claims in light of the assumption that your primary concern is X when it’s actually Y. Or, you may get challenged as to how you can be committed, as you say you are, to Z (which is compatible with Y but not with X) because you are taken to be supporting X. Being clear that your position is Y, not X, can head off arguments based on miscommunications and misunderstandings of this sort.

Another possible source of imprecision, though, can be that you haven’t yet worked out what precisely your position is. In this case, it’s a good idea to devote some reflection to working out your position — or at least to own up to being in the process of working out your position. Right or wrong, your partners in dialogue will likely regard you differently if you present yourself as having a position that’s still being worked out than if you seem confident in your commitment to an apparently incoherent position.

Of course, it’s also possible that someone’s position is unclear because he or she is purposely hiding or misrepresenting his or her view. But this would not be arguing in good faith, and this would throw us back to the impediment of presumptive mistrust.

In the quest for a real dialogue about animal research, there are a number of philosophical positions available, positions that sometimes get conflated. These include animal rights positions and animal welfare positions. Undoubtedly, people come to these positions by different routes, and accordingly there may be various flavors of these positions represented, so my characterizations of them shouldn’t be assumed to be definitive.

First let’s consider animal rights positions. Philosopher Tom Regan asserts that human and non-human animals have inherent rights. Prime among these is the right not to have one’s body transgressed for any reason — even to produce medical knowledge (for example) that might result in much good. Regan’s view seems to stretch a Kantian approach to ethics (where one respects humans as ends in themselves, never as mere means) to cover non-human animals as part of our moral community.

Peter Singer, another philosopher whose name is closely associated with animal rights positions, comes at the question of our ethical duties from a utilitarian approach instead. Like humans, Singer sees animals as creatures with a capacity to feel pain and with an interest in not feeling pain. Thus, in utilitarian calculations to maximize good (including pleasure) and minimize evil (including pain), we need to take account of the pleasure and pain not just of other humans but also of non-human animals. If we would regard certain kinds of treatment as unethical when applied to humans on account of the suffering they would produce, then is is “speciesism” not to judge as unethical the same treatment applied to non-human animals who would experience similar suffering.

It may be tempting here to return to the distinction between pain and suffering, where suffering requires something like self-awareness. However, Singer will challenge this move by pointing out that some humans may lack the required self-awareness (whether due to their age or to mental impairment) while some animals seem to display outward signs that are at least compatible with self-awareness. Specify where to draw the line and apply those criteria consistently across species, and Singer will credit you with a defensible ethical system.

Animal welfare positions are distinct from the position that animals have rights. These positions hold that animal suffering matters — that it is something to be avoided or minimized — but do not ground the ethical importance of animal suffering in animals’ status as right-bearers.

Often what grounds the claim that animal suffering has moral significance is that it matters to us — that humans recognize an interest in reducing animal suffering, that our awareness of animal pain can cause us emotional pain. This kind of grounding means that the moral significance of animal suffering is contingent, a state of affairs some find worrisome.

Besides the animal rights and animal welfare positions, there is also the possibility of staking out a position that holds that animals and animal suffering have no moral significance, that animals are not deserving of any special regard. Given that the regulatory environment in the U.S. aims to protect animal welfare, however, people who hold this view are still legally bound to treat animals in accord with what would be required by an animal welfare position.

At this point, I should mention a related imprecision that can make dialogue harder, a muddiness about what is required, permitted, or forbidden by law or regulations and what is required, permitted, or forbidden by a particular moral view. We can acknowledge the possibility of unjust laws (whether they are unjust because they allow unethical treatment of animals, or because they put unfair restrictions on human freedom), but we may not agree on which particular laws we take to be unjust. Moreover, even if we agree that a particular law is unjust, we may disagree about the best way to respond (whether through political efforts to change the law or civil disobedience or violent rebellion). In any case, when claiming “You can do X” or “You shouldn’t do Y,” it is important to be clear about whether the force of the “can” or the “shouldn’t” is supposed to come from morality or from law.

When parties to a dialogue have articulated their positions — including the philosophical commitments they bring to the table — there can be a real engagement, possibly including why they hold the commitments they do and what else might follow from those commitments. On the other hand, when the positions are not set out clearly, parties can end up misrepresenting their own commitments and the commitments of others. Sometimes this sort of imprecision results in a conflation of animal rights and animal welfare positions, falsely recognizing only two options as logically possible: caring about animals as rights-bearing creatures, or not caring about animals at all. Such a move blurs important philosophical differences between animal rights and animal welfare positions — among these, that it is possible to value animal welfare and also to value scientific research with animals. Insisting that animal welfare and scientific research are incompatible amounts either to denying the details of the animal welfare supporters’ philosophical commitments, or to insisting on your own rules of logic for the exchange. Certainly, dialogue is impossible in the absence of a shared set of rules for logical inference, and arguably denying your partner in dialogue’s actual philosophical commitments is another dialogue blocker.

Laying your philosophical commitments on the table seems to me a necessary step in having a real dialogue about animal research, but not a sufficient step. This is because our moral views influence not just our thinking, but also our actions — and some of those actions put people with opposing moral views in contact with each other in frightening ways. Thus, in part 6 of this series, we’ll discuss how actions that seem justified by one’s position, and the tactics used to advance the position, can create impediments to dialogue.

Comments

I think there are some (including but not limited to myself) who are really “animal rights” advocates inasmuch as we believe that the pleasure and pain of all animals ought to be taken into account; yet do not believe that all pleasure and pain needs to be given equal weight. Probably this leads to ‘speciesist’ behavior; most certainly the pleasure/pain evaluations have an element of arbitrariness to them (although “arbitrary pleasure/pain calculations” is really a problem for implementing utilitarianism under any circumstances).

Impediments to discussing animal rights range significantly in their difficulty to remove.

The most difficult to remove impediment is religious conviction. More than half the people who write to the Animal Liberation Front website want to know how animal rights advocates can go against their God’s will that animals are here to serve us. It rarely matters to them that some religious scholars and clergy interpret the documents differently. This impediment is often ignored, yet it is the most common impediment.

The second most difficult to remove impediment is the belief that animals have less basic rights than man. It can range from the belief that one good man is more important than one good dog to that one serial killer is worth more than all the animals. It rarely matters to them that they would not submit for experimentation their favorite pet even if it could cure a disease.

The easiest impediment to remove is the confusion between the actions of people and moral principles. If you visit the ALF guestbook you can read examples of angry readers that were upset by actions taken by animal rights activists. With a few sentences in response that separate the difference between “actions of people” and “AR prinicples” the impediments are often cast away.

Example: the guestbook entries by John Leuzowski of Nova Scotia beginning on April 16 with an attack on the actions of ARAs and shortly thereafter similar attacks by Jorge Marquez. Both were quick to cast away these impediments to discussion.

Very often the true impediments are in the category of deeply held beliefs which people mask by engaging in other debates of circuitous often illogical discussion that ends up with the conclusion “because God said so”, or “because they are only animals” or something to that effect.

In response to becca above, relax. It is not speciesist when ARAs use sentience to determine rights. True, some species are almost always more sentient than are others. A fully-functioning human will be given more consideration for rights than will an insect, based on sentience not species. But a person in an irreversible coma will not be given more rights than a healthy puppy, also based on sentience.

It’s great to see you addressing the question of dialog at some length. A couple quick points:

Efforts to dialog have uniformily come from the animal welfare/rights camp. Resistance to dialog by those within the industy has been the status quo. Pointing to the recent escalation of harrassment as a reason not to engage in dialog, as some here have done, is either intentionally misleading or due to ignorance of the long history of this issue.

The matters of the efficacy of the animal model and the rights of animals are two separate issues. Though they seem to intersect, they are disjoint. No one argues that high efficacy would justify raising children to use as research subjects.

Finally, and this is the likely real fear that keeps the animal researchers behind their moats, dialog doesn’t have to benefit either party to have high value. Undecided people benefit by listening to informed opinionated people argue. This is the idea behind a couple of good Sunday morning news round tables.

Efforts to dialog have uniformily come from the animal welfare/rights camp.

False. As the Pro-Test rally today at UCLA attests. As do all of the local rally on campuses through the 80s and 90s where researchers came out to talk to protesters. As do the various media appearances of researchers and university representatives over the years. As do the handful of scheduled “debates” staged in that earlier round, before the scientists learned a simple truth.

The ARA types have zero interest in actual productive dialog. They have zero interest in facts. What they are interested in is promulgating their disinformation campaign and their flagrant lies in an attempt to gain ground.

Undecided people benefit by listening to informed opinionated people argue. This is the idea behind a couple of good Sunday morning news round tables.

Oh, the slip is showing there Rick. Of course the Sunday morning teevee news circuit is the exact opposite of what is needed. Anybody watch the political shenanigans on those programs? Think that the purpose is to advance understanding of factual matters? Or is the purpose to come on and lie, spin and dissemble to whatever extent necessary to advance the political agenda?

“Of course the Sunday morning teevee news circuit is the exact opposite of what is needed. Anybody watch the political shenanigans on those programs? Think that the purpose is to advance understanding of factual matters?”

And what exactly IS the “exact opposite” of the Sunday morning news shows? Every other issue deemed important and news worthy is discussed — usually repeatedly — on such programs. Is it only this particular one that shouldn’t be discussed before a large audience?

Your grasp of history is as faulty as your understanding of the word dialog.

“Efforts to dialog have uniformily come from the animal welfare/rights camp. Resistance to dialog by those within the industy has been the status quo.”

This is just not true. As David Jentsch said very clearly in one of his interviews, this is the line that the animal rights people always throw out there, and it is completely misleading. In that interview, he said that no one, at any point, EVER from the animal rights contingent had contacted him in order to discuss animal welfare in his laboratory. Never. Not one time. The first contact they had with him was blowing up his car in the middle of the night. Does that sound like a very productive attempt at a discussion? Following that, they put up posts on anonymous websites and asked go-betweens to ask him to debate. No one ever directly called him up and just politely asked for a debate, they’d rather name-call. Does THAT sound like a productive attempt at a discussion? Would you want to talk to those people? I have yet to see any evidence at all that the animal rights extremists are interested in anything other than terror.

Los Angeles, CA: In an article today in the LA Times, as well as radio interviews on KPCC/NPR Radio, UCLA primate vivisector David Jentsch has exposed and poorly defended the immense suffering of non-human primates in his and his colleagues’ laboratories. Jentsch faired badly when confronted by physician and Press Officer Jerry Vlasak, MD, and has served nicely to bring the issue of animal exploitation into the mainstream media.

Jentsch declined an offer to debate Dr. Vlasak directly on KPCC Radio, as other vivisectors have declined similar requests to discuss the scientific validity and ethical consequences of their outdated, scientifically fraudulent, and cruel practices experimenting on non-human animals.